The present invention relates to a technology for delivering content via a network.
Conventionally, content (i.e. electronic data such as a computer program, a motion picture file, a web page (i.e. a file in the form of HTML etc.) or e-mail) received by a terminal is designed to operate under a resource condition that has been determined in advance.
For example, when motion picture streaming data is to be delivered via a network for reproduction on a terminal, such data that matches the communication speed and the processing power of the terminal is delivered.
Specifically, if the communication speed is high, high image quality data with a low compression ratio is delivered, while if the communication speed is low, low image quality data with a high compression ratio is delivered.
In view of the above, in the case that a content server is required to accommodate multiple resource conditions, it is necessary for the content server to store plural types of data of the same content corresponding to the respective resource conditions.
On the other hand, with development of multifunction of information processing terminals, a task of reproducing the content is sometimes executed in parallel with other tasks.
In that case, the resource condition sometimes varies in accordance with the priority of each task assigned to the CPU.